COUNTYWIDE : Mayor Hausdorfer Joins OCTD Board

The county’s transit board gained its first South County representative on Monday when San Juan Capistrano Mayor Gary L. Hausdorfer joined the five-member panel.

Hausdorfer, a self-employed investment adviser, was sworn in Monday as a member of the Orange County Transit District board. The board oversees the countywide bus system and, with the Orange County Transportation Commission, helps plan light rail service and special freeway lanes and ramps reserved for buses and car pools.

OCTD is scheduled to merge early next year with the transportation commission, and officials expect Hausdorfer to be one of the six people who will be selected to represent the county’s 29 cities on the combined 11-member board overseeing countywide transportation issues.

Hausdorfer said Monday that he does not see his role at OCTD limited to buses and that he plans to press for development of additional rail service as part of a well-balanced transportation system.

“From a countywide standpoint,” said Hausdorfer, “it’s important that we have a truly integrated system by the year 2000 that deals effectively with the automobile, buses, rail and monorail.”

The county must develop multiple transit alternatives, Hausdorfer added, or “we’re going to fail badly and it’s going to hurt the environment, it’s going to hurt business, and it’s going to hurt recreation.”

Hausdorfer praised the current bus system but said rail may be more attractive to people who, for some reason, refuse to ride buses in a “culture of people who have not grown up with that form of transit as part of their daily lives.”